Jim Gitz, Lobbyist For Home Rule

This past Tuesday the League of Women Voters held a public forum with former Freeport Mayor Jim Gitz as the presenter on the upcoming home rule referendum.

While the event was purported to be a "pro-con" event, the former mayor assured it was all pro for home rule and all con against home rule.  Furthermore, he provided very little attribution and was often misleading.  At the end he congratulated himself for sparing the crowd from "legalese".  However you cannot have an informative or effective  discussion on home rule without discussion about Illinois Statutes and case law.

But former Mayor Gitz did not want an informative or effective discussion, his goal was to convince Freeport voters that home rule must be maintained.  That was obvious when early in his presentation he eluded to the "severe" debt limit the Freeport City Council would be subject to if they were not home rule.  Right now, Freeport has no debt limit whereas non-home rule municipalities are subject to a debt limit of  "8.625% of their current assessed valuation." 

The following photo provides attribution to the above paragraph, it's from the book "Home Rule and Intergovernmental Cooperation and Conflict" and is used by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education to educate Illinois' attorneys.

If 8.625% of a municipality's assessed value is all that "severe" as Freeport's former mayor claimed, why hasn't Rockford, Dixon, Rock Falls, Sterling or even Lena complained that they can't indebt their citizens to a greater degree?

How high is Freeport's debt load at present?  Although the Freeport City Council recently used home rule to borrow "up to $2.5 million" on an ordinance's first reading after less than a month of discussion, not one City Council member asked what our total bonded indebtedness was at present.  Remember, half the city council is up for election early next year.

The former mayor also suggested we'd be having referendum on top of referendum if home rule is repealed by Freeport voters.  How?  Wasn't it former Mayor Gitz himself that vetoed a budget because the city council wanted to increase the home rule sales tax by one-half of a percent?  Didn't our mayor, at that time, say that using home rule to raise the sales tax was an improper use of this power and such a decision should go to referendum?  Do I need to pull and picture those meeting minutes?

Also, when are the citizens of Freeport entitled to a say so on tax and spend issues?  Despite a plethora of city council created taxes and a mountain of debt (I suspect well beyond the legal limit if Freeport was not home rule) not one decision was made by voters.  Every tax created and every dollar borrowed was the result of a decision made by the Freeport City Council, not the taxpayers, yet it is only ever the citizens that are accountable for these actions, city council members can simply leave Freeport, which some council members of the not so distant past have done.

"Property taxes will go through the roof" is another popular refrain made by those that wish to retain home rule power.  However, like Jim Gitz, they all evade the most important fact.  Stephenson County is a "tax cap" county as voters approved the "Property Tax Extension Limitation Law" (PTELL) years ago.  This law limits the amount property taxes can be raised by units of local government.  As a home rule unit, The City of Freeport is the only taxing body wholly contained in Stephenson County not bound by PTELL.  Without home rule, the City will have do the hard work of staying within a budget established by taxpayers, not the eight of them.

Most of his presentation was based upon his claim that all of the taxes created under home rule would disappear.  Former Mayor Gitz offered no citation to support this claim.  Well, I'm here to tell you that Jim Gitz and all his lawyerly credentials do not get to make such decisions and it's not like Jim Gitz hasn't misled the public and city council in the past to get his own way.  So those that want to use the argument that these home rule taxes, legally created at the time the ordinances creating them were passed, will "go away" had better provide some proof to back that claim.  So far, I have seen nothing, only hyperbole from those wanting to to retain home rule.

It's also often claimed that these home rule sales taxes are paid by people other than Freeporters, however, there is nothing to support that claim.  If anyone knows how much of these sales tax dollars come from elsewhere than they would know exactly how much business our high sales taxes drive north to Wisconsin.  I'll bet there are plenty more Illinois license plates in Monroe at this moment than there are Wisconsin plates in Freeport.  That's not an accident or dumb luck.  If it can be known with any type of accuracy how much is coming in and where it's coming from, then it should be known how much is being driven out too.

I asked our former mayor that if we repealed home rule this November couldn't the city council place it back on the ballot "in two years".  To which he played dumb.  That's the lobbyist in him, if a fact disrupts an underlying claim, pretend you're not familiar with the fact.  

The loss of home rule would require the Freeport City Council to do what every other unit of local government in northwest Illinois has to do, budget and govern.  Home rule has allowed the Freeport City Council to evade the hard work of governing as they've used home rule as a "get out of jail free card" every time things got tough throughout the past 30-years.  Borrow more money and create a new tax to pay for it, that's been the method of operation since 1992.

Next up, how home rule is used to bury the poor in charges while subsidizing the wealthy.

As always, yours in honesty

John Samuel Cook

2022

A Former Freeport Mayor and Home Rule

This coming Tuesday the League of Women Voters of Freeport will host a community forum titled "Home Rule--Pro and Con", the presenter for the event will be former Freeport Mayor, Jim Gitz.  

First I must thank the LWV of Freeport for hosting these types of events.  There is no relevant media operating in the City of Freeport.  Without the LWV we would be left with political advertising as our only source of information on candidates for office and other important issues of public concern and choice.

Former Mayor Gitz's credentials alone assure he knows much about the vast powers home rule bestows upon local government.  Without the former mayor I would know far less about the home rule issue.  

Back in 2002 and 2003, during the Jim Gitz administration, I was attempting to inform the community about how City Hall was planning on using home rule.  At that time I was banned from the pages of the Journal-Standard and there was no social media.  However, the Rockford paper was owned by a different company and gave me the space to write about what the headline writer called abuse of home rule in Freeport in their Sunday edition.  Here is a picture of that article which was published on June 1, 2003.

Our former mayor then penned his own guest column which was published the following Sunday wherein he justified the use of home rule powers to get around state statues that were written to protect taxpayers.  This was the exact issue where I learned that the Bond Issued Notification Act is not binding upon home rule units (see previous post from July 20).  Following is Mayor Gitz's  column.

Of course the huge bond issue was approved by the City Council, probably on a single reading but I don't have 2003 meeting minutes at my finger tips.

The projects funded by this huge bond issue were never my intended point.  The process was.  There was no formal notice and no public hearing regarding this massive debt issuance against our collective credit much less a referendum which would be required if we lived any other municipality in Stephenson, Jo Daviess, Carroll, Ogle, Lee, and Whiteside Counties.

Whenever a municipality uses home rule as an end run around Illinois Statutes which require published notice and a public hearing prior to the adoption of ordinances which create general obligation debt, is plain and simple abuse of home rule powers.  And the the City of Freeport has done this regularly for the past 30-years, including in the past 90-days.

Let's also not forget the fact that with home rule it only requires eight city council members to increase our debt and tax burden exponentially and then they, as individuals, can simply move out of Freeport leaving the rest of us with the debt and taxes they thought necessary.  This has happened.  Long term debt and taxation issues deserve and need a much better public hearing if the public is to feel included and accountable for where we are as a community.

I will give any current or former city council member, or anyone else for that matter, who wishes to rebut my opinion, that skirting public disclosure statutes is an abuse of home rule power, all the space they need or want to make counterpoint.

I do look forward to former Mayor Gitz's presentation, while I won't dare speak for him and haven't asked him, I'm pretty sure his outlook on home rule will be quite different as a civilian attorney than an elected mayor; the latter having to worry about budgets and promises while still portraying the ever elusive "progress".

One more side point, while I often and publicly disagreed with Mayor Gitz on various issues over the years, I believe he always tried his best under not very favorable conditions to do what he thought was proper.  Furthermore, we do agree on many issues but those are no fun to write about.

As always, yours in honesty,

John Samuel Cook
2022